Danny Lopez isn’t the kind of politician who talks up Denver’s 300 days of sunshine a year or the eclectic doings of Lower Downtown.

The proudly blue-collar city employee who spends his workdays viewing Denver’s sewer lines is the self-proclaimed anti-establishment candidate running for the little people.

“I’ve always had a heartfelt desire to speak up for people who can’t defend themselves,” Lopez said.

For Lopez, simply crossing the threshold of the kind of coffee shop that features baristas is like a breach of solidarity.

“Corporate greed is ruining our society,” Lopez said. “I don’t believe the wealth at the top is being redistributed to the bottom.”

The Public Works employee supervises a two-man crew that runs video units through wastewater lines looking for needed maintenance.

“I make dirty movies all day,” he likes to quip.

More seriously, he’s running for Denver mayor on a platform that includes opposing pay raises for Denver’s top officials and raising pay for workers, public and private. Meanwhile, Lopez’s salary this year is $56,192, which is an increase of 32 percent over the last five years. His salary grew even during the recession; since 2008, it’s increased almost 17 percent.

Though Lopez set out as a young man to study law and political science, work and the responsibilities of raising a family ended his collegiate career at the University of Colorado in its first year.

His junior high and high school education was influenced by Denver’s required busing in the 1970s. Born in Alamosa Community Hospital on July 15, 1959, he later moved to Denver with his family and studied at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Curtis Park, St. Dominic’s and Skinner Junior High in north Denver, Smiley Junior High in Park Hill, and Thomas Jefferson High School in south Denver before graduating in 1977 from the former Iver C. Ranum High School in Westminster.

He has worked as a forklift operator, served as a union steward and made deliveries on his way to joining Public Works in 1998.

Noting his modest pay, Lopez declined to make available tax return filings and college transcripts that The Denver Post requested of each of the mayoral candidates.

He says he owes no back taxes and has never made enough money to significantly donate to charities.

The Democrat says his hard-work experience makes him uniquely qualified to bring his platform of “trickle-up economics” to the people of Denver.

And Lopez, 51, is not without political experience. He ran unsuccessfully against City Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz in 2003 and represented the only opposition to John Hickenlooper’s mayoral re-election in 2007, a race in which he garnered about 12 percent of the vote.

“I learned a long time ago there’s nothing wrong with having big dreams,” he said.

Should Lopez prevail in the current race, he will be missed at his day job, says Zeke Zarco, manager of the division at Wastewater in which Lopez works.

During the last rating period, Lopez was the most productive supervisor in Zarco’s 14-employee section; the video technician inspected the most lineal footage of sewer pipe for the period.

“He’s very passionate about the public service that he does,” Zarco said, who declined to weigh in on the mayoral race in his comments about Lopez as an employee and individual.

“Danny, he goes the extra mile in trying to figure out what is wrong with the sewers,” Zarco said.

Lopez is also passionate about youth sports. For 25 years, he says, he has coached baseball, basketball and football in Denver and Aurora.

Lopez also works as a DJ, currently at the Roadhouse Bar in southwest Denver.

Roadhouse manager Tracy Gibson says “DJ Danny” is the best DJ she knows.

“If I can’t have Danny, I don’t want anyone else,” Gibson said, adding that he can get folks young and old dancing, that he’s always on time and that he never drinks too much — unlike a lot of the members of the bands she hires.

“He is a good fellow,” Gibson said.

But could Lopez be effective as mayor?

The long-shot candidate who so far hasn’t reported any campaign financial support or expenditures says his limited education and minimal supervisory experience shouldn’t be held against him.

“I’m a smart person,” he said. “I can grow a political brain.”

He notes in a brief biography he submitted for this profile: “I BELIEVE THE JOB OF MAYOR IS JUST ANOTHER JOB. 40% OF IT IS CEREMONIAL, AND THE OTHER 60% HAS CHECKS AND BALANCES IN PLACE THAT ALLOW ME TO SAY ‘I CAN’T SCREW IT UP ANY MORE THEN (sic) THE PREVIOUS GUYS.’ “

Chuck Plunkett is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. A professional journalist for more than 20 years, he served as The Post's politics editor from July 2011 through July 2016. Plunkett worked for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, his hometown paper, and for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review before coming to The Denver Post in 2003, where he ultimately began developing his writing about politics as the newsroom's lead writer covering Denver's preparation for the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

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